


Mirror Hunt

by Tel



Category: Honor Harrington Series - David Weber, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-12
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A century-old debt has come due, but Miles Vorkosigan is missing. Sequel to Short Victorious Vor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

  
Prologue   


* * *

  


**_We approach jump_** , Mother Ship said, in her soft, warm voice. The People stopped to heed, then raced off down the catwalks as she directed them to their proper stations.

River's Skin shivered in anticipation. It was happening. It was happening now.

He looked at Sings A New Song, who rose wearily to her feet, grimly and fiercely focused as always. None of the People had endured what she had endured. He sensed her mind questing throughout the ship, another fruitless search. _He is not here._ She sounded surprised.

River's Skin tried to hide his concern, but he was sure she felt it. No, Hides Badly wasn't here. He hadn't been on the station either, or the last several dozen places she'd searched for him. He'd disappeared seventeen human years ago, in the midst of a violent attack. Nobody was quite willing to say 'dead', at least not where Sings a New Song could hear. The memory singer was impossibly valuable and yet impossibly fragile, with both her bonds attenuated into nothingness. She had survived, though, just as she had survived the bondmate before Hides Badly. Every day he watched her he thought it more incredible.

 _ **Pilot demands you**_ , Mother Ship reminded him. He started guiltily and looked up. Yes, the catwalks were clear of People, and the ship hummed with readiness. If they missed schedule because of him... _My apologies, Memory Singer,_ he told Sings a New Song hastily, and felt her amused tolerance in return.

Mother Ship's nudges grew more insistent, as if he were a wayward kitten she needed to herd. _Late, late, late..._ He raced into the navigation room, trying to look vaguely dignified. He felt the gentle exasperation of Mind Like Stars, waiting under the pilot's headset for him. They would share the jump, as always, Mind Like Stars seeking the path with his laser-keen focus, River's Skin anchoring them both to reality and making sure they came home.

The headset dropped over Mind Like Stars, connecting the hidden contacts on his temples with Mother Ship. Jump klaxons began to sound.

Time to make history.  



	2. Chapter 2

The waiting was wearing on her.

Honor Harrington's expression was still as she watched the displays on the flag bridge. A partial freeze on commercial shipping through the Junction had been imposed a little less than a week ago. Ship traffic was already down to half, and before the month was over it would be barely a quarter of normal. Home Fleet was arrayed in depth throughout the system, to specifications argued over by generations of naval planners. Everything was in readiness.

As the display's countdown timer currently read 412 T-hours, everything would have to stay that way. Her gaze strayed to the one Grayson cruiser on the plot with mild disfavor, then went back to the timer.

To a certain extent this was all showing the flag on the home front, of course. She estimated the chance of an open attack at somewhere between slim to none. Nevertheless, professional Navy paranoids had been worrying about a second (or third, or fourth...) front opening up at the Junction since the mirror termini had been discovered, and the two unarmed ships that had slipped through in the first decades of the blockade had only heightened their concerns. 'Disappearing' a few ships here and there would be simple, and getting a fleet into the system almost as easy,

She smiled inwardly. Not that taking out the Junction forts would ever be easy! Her own concerns were different and subtler. Vorkosigan had retreated out of weakness, not strength. If in his consideration he was still weak, the silent embargo wouldn't break at all. If it did, it meant that he and his allies felt they could survive the consequences of stealing her private yacht, stranding a Manticoran ambassadorial delegation, and kidnapping her son.

There would be consequences, certainly. She'd sworn that in cold anger a hundred years before.

"Message from _Tester's Mercy_ , Your Grace. Captain Niles wishes to pay a courtesy visit."

Lieutenant Khan sounded fully professional, but Honor tasted the com officer's vague embarrassment. Khan knew who was on that ship just as well as Honor did. "Only Captain Niles?" she replied mildly.

"Ah... I can ask, Your Grace..." Nimitz dropped to the deck and stretched his six limbs out on the floor one by one, claws extended.

"No matter." On second thought, this conversation was really best handled by hapless intermediaries. "Give Captain Niles my regards and..."

"Excuse me, ma'am." A com rating bravely interrupted both of them. "Astro Control priority override. There's incipient class two destabilization from the Lynx terminus."

 _Now_? Honor thought, and imagined most of the flag bridge was thinking it too. Well, no better time. Initial startlement dissolved into a flurry of activity, and she returned to her chair, feeling the excitement at tactics from across the bridge. Something had appeared on their boards, and she saw it just as soon as they did. Their sensors were now sophisticated enough to distinguish the two different types of mirror nexus transits. A class one destabilization originated from the other side, 'pulling' ships to itself or 'pushing' them across in a one way trip. A class two destabilization, on the other hand, meant that the transiting vessel was generating its own anomaly. Which...opened possibilities.

There'd been two class one transits in the first decades of the embargo - one had repatriated a subset of the Manticoran hostages, while the other had returned the personal effects she'd left on _Paul Tankersley_ and (more surprisingly) her children's grandmother. Ever since the _Ariel_ had left, though, the opposing side had intelligently kept its most critical technology firmly out of reach.

"So what have we caught, Jane?" she asked, settling back to observe. Weeks early or not, the Manticoran response had been drilled enough to run on rails and was best left to the designated vessels. Her flagship was well back from the action.

"One small vessel, perhaps sixty thousand tons. No readable ID. Sail's just gone down, and there's no sign they're trying to bring a wedge or any other type of drive up."

"Sensible," Honor said neutrally.

"Take a look at the lidar..." someone muttered. Honor called the relayed sensor data up on her own display. There was clearly a hammerhead impeller drive craft under there - just as clearly, it was covered with skeletal scaffolding. An extensive superstructure surrounded it, and it looked like it had a secondary, larger pair of impeller rings suspended above the first.

"Your Grace." Her flag lieutenant's eyebrows were up. "The codes are highly obsolete, but they're now transmitting the identification RMS _Paul Tankersley_ "

"Are they now." Less than half a light-minute away, HMS _Assurance_ was challenging the vessel, and communications were being relayed to the flagship in almost real-time.

"Unidentified vessel, you have entered a military restricted zone. You will immediately surrender and shut down all systems except life support and communications and prepare to accept boarding parties. This is your only warning. Any failure to comply with our instructions will result in the destruction of your craft."

She didn't recognize the voice of the man that answered, but the dry, familiar accent was another matter. " _Assurance_ , acknowledged. Please be advised that this is an unarmed Manticore-registered civilian craft carrying Manticoran civilians."

A very brief pause. _Assurance_ must have just noticed the transponder change. " _Paul Tankersley_ , we require an explicitly stated unconditional surrender at this time."

" _Assurance_ , you have our unconditional surrender." The faceless voice on the com sounded more amused than anything else.

" _Paul Tankersley_ , we are taking you under tow. Disarm your ship's company and continue to stand by to accept boarders."

Honor nodded. The ship could be dissected at leisure, but the most important thing right now was to get it well clear of the Junction and screened by ship wedges from curious onlookers. Her present position was the designated rendezvous.

"Lieutenant Khan," she said crisply, returning her attention to the previous problem, "please invite Captain Niles and his guest aboard."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"After that, I'd like to get holo feeds from _Assurance_ 's boarding parties up on the flag plot, if we can. Let's get a look at what we're dealing with." She let the minutes spin out as everyone maneuvered into position, musing on the future and (as the feed was piped in) pondering why somebody had painted the _Paul Tankersley_ 's airlocks bright yellow. Boarding occurred uneventfully, although nobody was waiting for them, and fire teams split off to exhaustively search the vessel.

While the fundamentals were Manticoran, bulkheads had been moved and rooms re-purposed. She hardly recognized most of it, and the boarding party, working off old blueprints, had similar problems. Large, transparent pipes ran along all the corridors at the top, sometimes paralleling them, sometimes crossing them. Several of the corridors seemed not only abandoned, but poorly kept up.

The teams went a full minute without encountering anyone, and then a sudden spate of surprised swearing came over the com. Jane tracked it down for her, revealing four heavily armed marines staring up at... a treecat. The treecat, who had come in from a side passage, looked inquiringly at them from inside its tube and then trotted off down the corridor.

"Treecat. The hell?" The sergeant's accent was Sphynxian. Honor leaned in for a closer look, and then straightened as Nimitz leaned in too and threatened to unbalance them both. Her treecat's ears were alert, and his claws dug into her shoulder pad.

The treecat stopped and looked at the boarding party more impatiently. His tail flicked to get their attention, and he kept going at a slower pace.

"Damn, this ship must be kitted up like a giant hamster cage," one of the other marines said. "Those tubes are everywhere."

"Let's try to get you out of there," the sergeant muttered under his breath. "Sandusky, I think there's an emergency access port up there. Can we lure it down?"

The treecat patiently doubled back, mimed walking feet with his fingers, and pointed. Looking at them like they were idiots, he started off down the tube again.

"Is that thing trying to communicate with us?"

The sergeant shook his head. "I guess we follow it. Mark this area unsecured, we'll need to come back."

"Your Grace?" Honor sensed Lieutenant Khan behind her and turned inquiringly. "Captain Ansip wants to know if you'll be greeting the Grayson delegation. They're docking imminently."

"Yes," Honor said. Nothing for it. _Assurance_ had everything under control on their end, but she needed to make sure everything was kept under control here. As she strode purposefully out of the room, she kept an earbud on to follow the progress of the boarding parties. By the time she'd reached the boat bay, the teams had found one kidnapped ambassador in the crew quarters, and a human and a treecat on the bridge. Most of Manticore's lost citizens seemed to be present. What was missing was crew... and the man she'd called Naismith.

"Holy..." She heard the Sphinxian sergeant in her earbud. "That's a lot of treecats."

She took the earbud out. The side party was assembled, Captain Ansip was waiting for her, and as she crossed the threshold the boat bay tractors were already bringing the pinnace in. The umbilicals clamped on, and Honor took a breath as she saw the unfamiliar pair of Harrington armsmen swing out of the tube first and to their accustomed places. Swimming behind them was a tall black-haired woman, and a bugle started up with Grayson's anthem.

"Protector Elizabeth," Honor said as the bosun's pipes started up for Captain Niles. "How good of you to join us."

She hadn't seen her daughter in six years.

*

Sings a New Song curled in a pod in the Nest Hall, feeling lost. For all that her mental wounds were old and scabbed over, they stabbed at her now. Mother Ship and River's Skin and Mind Like Stars had anchored her a little for many years, but River's Skin and Mind Like Stars were gone and the emptiness was back.

 _They've decided to leave the People shut in the Nest Hall for now until some of the forest humans arrive_ , River's Skin had relayed through Mother Ship. _I have to leave. Stay strong. It won't be long._

Stalk Weaver and Three Hands skittered over with a water bulb and some vat meat. She drank, but couldn't bring herself to eat. Things could still go so wrong and she was so tired.

They hadn't found Mother Ship's heart yet, rooted as it was inside the life support plant. Curling in on herself further, Sings a New Song gave the ship a mental nudge. Because the old computer was down, the ship was nearly blind in spots, but images coiled into her mind obligingly. High Clan warriors were everywhere, as were engineers like her long-lost first bonded.

She stared at them longingly for a moment, then summoned the will to continue. She couldn't stay haunted by the past. She was a memory singer, and if she started down that branch she'd never find her way back again. It was strange how homesick this all made her.

The image of a man in green crossed her mind, and she snapped to alertness - someone of Dances on Clouds's clan, surely. Finally. There were many of them, and they earned odd glances from the engineers.

"I don't deny your right to be here." Dances on Clouds said as she came into view. Laughs Brightly must be here. Laughs Brightly was here! She felt him faintly now on the edge of her perception, grown and changed from all their years apart. "However, I must remind you that this is not in any sense a joint military operation."

"It's a matter of honor for _Grayson_ ," the shorter female beside her replied with odd emphasis. "I will require access to the prisoner." Startled, Sings a New Song recognized the mind-glow of Hides Badly's daughter, who'd been known to her kind as Fierce Noise. She tasted different, though, old and strange, with a deep _wrongness_ about her that was apparent even at this great distance.

Dances on Clouds frowned. "Not until the ambassador and his staff are fully debriefed and we have a better idea of what we're dealing with. Under the circumstances, it's impossible to be too paranoid here."

"Delay only serves the enemy. Can't you sense that?"

Sings a New Song reached out to Laughs Brightly in almost desperate need. _I am here. Please. Come to me._

Laughs Brightly stiffened suddenly, and Dances on Clouds visibly reacted. She could sense them fully now, the bond between her mate and his chosen stronger than ever. Nor was the other woman mindblind. Head raised, her mind sought the source of the disturbance with the deadly focus of a born hunter.

*

"We're being watched," Liz said softly, sending a hand signal to her armsmen. McGraw glanced at Honor for guidance. She shook her head minusculy, and her own team relaxed into watchful alertness. She'd sensed no threat - only the faint current of treecat speech.

"The ship is fully secured, Your Grace," Honor said in a cool, formal tone, hoping there wouldn't be a scene.

"Not all threats are physical," Liz said grimly.

 _Not every threat you sense is real_ , Honor thought with a mental sigh. To be fair, Liz's ability to sense a Havenite assassin at fifty meters had saved her life plenty of times in the past. She'd developed the rudimentary empathy she had inherited from her mother into a weapon to keep her safe during the long years she'd spent in command of Grayson's hopeless resistance. She'd used it against those who dared stand against her as well.

Some of those people had been close to Honor, back before the Mayhews had been compelled to surrender to Haven, back before Liz had taken up guerrilla arms against both factions. Decades had passed, but there'd been too many deliberate and needless deaths for Honor to ever forgive.

"Bleek!" Nimitz said. He'd been mentally listening to something, but now he turned her attention to her with barely subdued excitement. A picture flashed into her mind of a weedy female treecat, accompanied by a strong sense of urgency. _Could it be Samantha?_ Hard to say at this remove, but she didn't look well.

Her lips pressed together. Her skilled, handpicked staff was supervising the dissection of the vessel and the interrogation and debriefing of its passengers. There was no real need for her to be here, except to see for herself the ship that had been stolen from her so long ago. Realistically, she hadn't expected to find any new clues or evidence. Yet if Samantha was here - was Miles? It shouldn't be possible. Somehow, secretly, she felt she'd know if he was here.

"There's some devilry at work here," Liz muttered, distracted. Honor found it hard to disagree. She reached up to stroke Nimitz in reassurance as he mentally urged her down the corridor.

"There are treecats on this ship," Honor said. "They can probably sense us now. Ship bulkheads reduce their range, but not by that much."

"Ah," Liz said. "You didn't mention that." She frowned. "They're not necessarily on our side, you know. One chose Lord Naismith, after all."

"The issue is that it isn't possible to handle treecat prisoners in the same way as human ones."

"Nonsense." Liz said. "You wouldn't say that about Medusan prisoners." She smiled and Honor got the distinct sense she was being patronized. "You're not precisely objective on the topic, you know."

"It's one I have to answer to the Queen on," Honor parried.

"She's not objective either. If both of you paid less attention to your treecats and more to your relationship with God, Manticore would be much better off."

"Elizabeth," Honor said coldly, even though she knew maternal disapproval wasn't a winning strategy here. To be fair, her daughter's faith was entirely sincere, if a bit Masadan about the particulars. Many cosmopolitan Manticorans dismissed her as a mindless fanatic, while many on Grayson revered her as something resembling a living saint. Honor knew she was neither, being one of the few who really understood how close she was to madness. Sometimes it seemed that her religion was the only thing that allowed her even a tenuous grasp on reality.

Giving Liz an eloquently dirty look, Nimitz dropped off Honor's shoulder and loped down the corridor. Liz made a satisfied 'hm!' noise. Honor, realizing Nimitz was probably heading straight into the armed guards around the modified dining hall the treecats were living in, reached for her com link and started to follow.

Liz and her entourage followed in turn, glancing around as they passed door after door. For all her outward composure, Liz tasted as nervous as Honor'd ever felt her, increasingly uncomfortable the further they went into the ship. It wasn't something she could ask about, but she wondered about it as she instructed the dining hall guards not to stun Nimitz. He was waiting impatiently for her when they got there, and Honor felt the buzzing presence of dozens more 'cats behind the door.

"Your Grace, I'd advise you to stay back. Unbonded treecats can be unpredictable." Surprisingly Liz didn't object, seeming to prefer to keep her distance. McGraw looked like he was wondering why his Steadholder was approaching them anyway, but kept his peace.

The room was dimly lit. The tables of the dining area were still in place, but the deck ceiling was covered by a network of tubes and pods, reducing the ceiling clearance to significantly under two meters. The walls were painted dappled grey. Numerous shadowy forms moved inside the pods, and a lean. underfed treecat suddenly dropped to a claw-scarred tabletop. She was wearing a gleaming gold necklace, Honor noted with bemusement, before grabbing hold of a tube to weather a sudden and almost overwhelming surge of emotions from Nimitz. She managed - barely - not to hit her head.

"Bleek."

"Bleek!"

Suddenly the room was alive with treecats, looking at her with bright eyes. She suffered a sudden wave of mild disorientation. From her sense of them, they were hovering between amusement and concern. McGraw gripped his stunner tightly, less sure of their intent.

She frowned, taking the measure of them. A number had odd ornamentation on them, and several of the 'cats had reached a startlingly large size. None of them looked overfed though, and some were even more perilously lean than Samantha.

"Sergeant, have these 'cats been given any food?" she asked in mild rebuke.

"They have access to the galley and seem to be using it," the guard said nervously. "We brought in some celery and such off your ship, but it took a while for them to eat it."

That couldn't be right. She gave the gathered treecats a second look, and realized that most of them seemed only half-present to her mental senses, drifting aimlessly. Except for Samantha and a pair of briefly glimpsed females, all those she saw were male. They felt... orphaned, she thought. A few seemed bright and whole and complete, but only a bare handful.

Nimitz was among that number, suddenly all there in a way he hadn't been for a very long time. She hadn't fully realized the silent strain Samantha's absence had put on him.

"Hello, Samantha," she said softly.

Samantha looked up at her and bleeked innocently. Honor stared unblinkingly at her in return. She had decidedly mixed emotions about Samantha. The treecat was undoubtedly a co-conspirator in all this - equally undoubtedly, she was key to Nimitz's happiness.

Samantha yawned eloquently and unhooked a walnut-sized device from her necklace. Honor only got a brief glimpse of it before it was casually lobbed her way. She could have caught it, of course, and nearly did, but when it came down to it she just didn't _trust_ Samantha. Neither did McGraw - his stunner came up and fired. The icosahedron hit the floor behind her with a click and rolled out into the hall during the fraught moment after Samantha hit the floor. After quickly establishing the startled treecats weren't about to jump them, Honor directed McGraw to pick up Samantha and get out.

"That might have been a little excessive, Armsman," she said quietly once the door was shut. Nimitz was giving her a bit of a look. What had Samantha been playing at?

"Looked like it could have been a grenade, My Lady," he said neutrally.

Probably a good idea not to touch it, she thought, spotting it over by Liz. She reached for her comlink to call a tech to deal with it just as Liz casually reached down to pick it up. Her daughter gave the geometric device a thoughtful once-over, then tossed it to an armsman to store.

Honor's teeth set behind her lips. She could already tell that it was going to be one of _those_ days.


	3. Chapter 3

"That's enough recap," Honor said. "The preliminary tactics reports can wait. What intelligence have you gotten out of the passengers?"

Commander Carmen Abdelmassi, her staff intelligence officer, flushed slightly and quickly changed gears. She was relatively junior for Honor's staff, short, plump, and some generations younger than Honor herself. The last was more an asset than a liability, in Honor's eyes. While few would dare mention it to her face, some factions in the Admiralty had questioned whether her past relationship with Naismith and contributing role in the genesis of this crisis rendered her unsuitable for this particular command. Abdelmassi, an up-and-comer out of the frontier worlds, had never previously served with the 'old harridans' of Honor's own peer group and had been chosen to offer a fresh perspective.

Considering the sheer volume of information Carmen was having to triage right now, she was actually doing quite well, Honor thought. But it wouldn't hurt to keep her on her toes.

"The vessel was carrying seven humans, including four repatriated Manticoran subjects, one Grayson citizen, the new foreign husband of a Manticoran subject, and what appears to be the sole human member of the vessel's crew. The Manticorans include Captain Susarla, the delegation's military attache, Ezra Pinto and Olive Klein, who were SIS under diplomatic cover, and Bob Newhook, who was Naval Intelligence under diplomatic cover. Klein is accompanied by her husband, Raf Klein. The Grayson citizen is Steven Brackstone, who was crew aboard the _Paul Tankersley_."

"There was speculation when the first wave of repatriations happened that the Grayson detainees were working for their intelligence. Has this been proven?" Honor asked.

"Essentially. When our entire diplomatic delegation and the crew of the _Paul Tankersley_ were trapped on the Betan side after the betrayal and detained on the mirror Manticore, they were chemically interrogated and separated into two groups. One group was isolated while the Betans reverse-engineered the hyper generator and returned to us over a decade later. The second group included eight people. We know five of them were working for us and two of them on your ship were working for Grayson. And then there's Kit Jenner. We haven't _confirmed_ he was working for the Mesans, but... "

This was all familiar territory. "Do we have an accounting of what happened to the rest of the missing?"

"Mary Urquhart, the other Grayson citizen, is dead in a mass casualty ship accident. According to the others, the circumstances don't seem to have been suspicious. Newhook says that Yeats is still alive but has gone native on the planet Marilac. Jenner is also apparently still alive, but none of the returnees have heard from him in decades."

"His absence does seem to speak volumes."

"Incidentally, SIS wants their people back immediately, and Brackstone's demanding access to a consular officer."

"If you think you've gotten everything of immediate military use out of them, SIS can have them. The husband too." Honor hesitated. "Stall Brackstone. Under no circumstances are you to release him to Protector Elizabeth."

"We don't have much basis to detain him at present."

"The political situation on Grayson's changed drastically since he left. He may be in danger." Carmen nodded and made a note.

Honor folded her hands deliberately on the desk. "And our prisoner?"

"The prisoner is a fifty-five year old second generation prolong male who was found on the bridge in apparent command of the vessel. He identifies himself as Lord Thierry Vorkosigan, and has indicated that he is one of the younger sons of Count Vorkosigan."

"Count Vorkosigan being my son Aral?" she asked neutrally. How many generations had passed here?

Commander Abdelmassi nodded. "It appears he's adopted his father's surname."

"There's no point insisting on the Harrington at this late date," Honor said with brisk attempted nonchalance. Her eyes strayed to a very old holo cube on her desk, and she carefully picked it up. She had left it on the _Paul Tankersley_ , but Miles's mother Cordelia had returned it to her almost eighty years ago along with the Harrington Sword and certain other effects. Miles had sent no message, and Honor had received the strong impression that mother and son were not in agreement about the voyage. Yet the holo cube had been returned with more images than it had contained before.

She called up one of them now and compared it to the image on the file. She knew her son's adult face only from these holos, but the resemblance was there. Lord Thierry was slighter and paler, with more russet hair and a less military bearing. He was not in uniform and looked a shade older than the time-frozen holo, since Aral had been barely over twenty when it was taken. So many missing years...

Honor kept her voice even. "Who does he represent and what does he have to say to us?"

"Your Grace, he's been friendly but not particularly informative. He claims to be a Class II Administrator, and indicates that he's been sent to facilitate the peaceful resolution of the current crisis. He has not produced any diplomatic credentials in a form we recognize, and his travel documents seem to be from an unknown interstellar quango."

"I see."

"He desires a private audience with yourself and the Empress. And he's produced a letter for you from Count Vorkosigan, which he gave to me voluntarily."

"You've read it?" Honor asked, testing.

"Yes, Your Grace," Carmen said, and then added a bit nervously "By orders. It's attached to the file. The handwriting is somewhat opaque, but I've produced a transcript."

Honor called it up. The scanned handwriting was impeccably neat but highly stylized, and she found herself referring to the clear copy several times. It was a formal letter expressing Aral's regret that his official duties prevented him from being present and extending an invitation and safe passage to visit him and his family on Barrayar. She couldn't get a sense of him through it - a stranger could have written it.

She put it down.

"The Empress's absolute precondition for any negotiations is the extradition of my former husband. Where is he?"

"The story we have been provided is that Naismith - Vorkosigan, rather, he went back to his birth name - was kidnapped seventeen years ago and has been missing ever since."

"Kidnapped by...?"

"Unknown parties."

"In your professional opinion, is this story plausible?"

"According to our returnees, the abduction was fairly public and the story was widely disseminated in the media. Of course, this is all no better than third-hand, and there are numerous reasons Naismith might want to hide from the public eye."

"And numerous reasons for people to want to kill him, no doubt." Honor stared down at the file. "What does our prisoner have to say?"

"Lord Thierry claims no knowledge of Naismith's present whereabouts, and expressed no opinion on the question of whether he's alive or dead. He strongly insists the abduction was hostile and that Naismith would not voluntarily abandon his treecat. He says Naismith's treecat is on the ship and has custody of a recording he wanted you to have in the event that he did not survive."

Honor's lips pursed. If she'd had less self-control she would have sworn.

"Liz has it now," she said.

*

"I am in need of guidance," Liz said.

She felt her demon-haunted chaplain behind her, purity of purpose clear underneath the roiling hellish taint. She turned to see Mary dressed in stark black, her hair veiled, her mind calm.

The chapel was otherwise vacant. Her armsmen had respectfully withdrawn, and Liz drew her own white prayer shawl over her head. Unruled by any man, she did not cover before them. However, all honor was owed to God.

"Are you at peace with yourself and ready to seek direction?" Mary asked.

"...No," she confessed.

"What troubles you?"

"Grayson stands wronged," Liz said, after pausing to think. "I cannot leave this unresolved, I can't trust Lady Harrington with my sword, and all of my instincts are telling me I need to be here myself. But I'm risking everything in the process. Every light year from Grayson reduces my power there. I am starting to see the Test take form in front of me and... I have doubts."

"About yourself?"

"About my fitness for the task." She paused uncomfortably. "The demons are back."

Mary couldn't see her demon. It had taken Liz a long time to realize that most of the tainted were unaware of their tempters, shielded in their innocence by the Intercessor's grace. Seeing them and hearing their whispers didn't make her holy. It made her susceptible.

Her chaplain nodded. "Have they approached you? Have they asked you to do anything?"

"I don't listen. Nothing they say can be trusted to be true or false. But it's not just the demons harassing me. The media on Manticore... I swear they must be in league with Satan." She was only half-joking. Every piece of footage they'd had of Lord Naismith had been dredged up, and cruel speculation about her mother's motives and hers had been rampant. Nothing redeeming about it, no higher purpose.

Mary was quiet, deep in thought.

"There's a power at work here behind the scenes." Liz stared up at the altar's high cross. "I only wish I knew which one. It caused me to take this ship instead of the slower one I was scheduled on. It allowed me to arrive just as the seal was broken. And it brought something of my father's into my possession."

"Are you afraid?"

"I feel like I'm standing over an abyss. At least with Haven, I knew what I was fighting. I don't know why he did it. I don't understand him." Another pause. "Because I don't understand him, I fear I may become him."

"Have you talked to your mother about this?" Mary asked. Liz winced. As a daughter, she owed her mother respect. As Protector, she could not brook Lady Harrington's rebellion. Pragmatically, confrontation was best avoided.

"Some, long ago."

"You know all Grayson wishes for peace between the two of you."

"I know," Liz sighed. "I think she suspects why I'm here."

"Do you think she'll try to stop you?"

"She may try. But I have something she wants, now." Liz let out another breath, turning the rounded device over and over in her hand. Was she right to have taken it? Sinking to her knees, she placed it on the steps behind her and searched her mind for the right prayer.

_Tester of Mankind, have mercy on our frailty. Let us be fit to meet the tasks set before us.  
Let us not be led to destruction, unless it rebound to Your glory._

A fleeting sense of peace passed over her. Eyes still closed, she reached back for the device, fingernail pressing down on the catch she'd felt but not yet dared release.

*

The purpose of the monitoring room was to watch the prisoners without being watched, but Honor had the distinct sense that Thierry Vorkosigan knew she was there.

"I should mention this before we go forward," she said. Commander Abdelmassi hovered over the console, while Jane lurked near the back of the room. "I have... some genetic modifications that strengthen my bond to Nimitz, allowing me to tap into his telempathic senses to an extent. This ability could well be hereditary."

Carmen's hands paused. "Could you elaborate, Your Grace?" she asked.

"Like me, he's bonded to a treecat. He may be able to sense you and your emotional state from here." That wasn't the whole story, of course, but claiming to possess secret mental powers rarely inspired confidence in subordinates.

"Through walls?" Carmen sounded extremely skeptical. "They're twenty meters away from us."

"To a limited extent, yes." She could sense him, now that she thought about it, and his faint kernel of growing amusement.

"I'll keep that in mind, Your Grace. Are you ready to go in?"

"Yes," she said. She'd spent two hours closeted with Susarla to get the necessary background, and had gone over the interrogation highlights carefully with Carmen. She had a better idea of who he was now, although _what_ might be a better term.

 _"The Betans are better at what they do than the Mesans,"_ Susarla had said. _"Scarier, too."_ She reflected on that as she settled into her seat in the interrogation room and waited for the prisoner to be brought in.

Thierry Vorkosigan was not a soldier. That much was clear from his bearing alone. His eyes flickered over every detail of the scene as he entered, He was shorter than she'd expected, shorter than Liz, and his expression was open and guileless. She rose as he entered, but his gaze tracked past her face and settled on Nimitz with single-minded focus. A hand spun up in an elaborate flourish as his tongue made a sharp clicking noise.

He had Nimitz's attention, certainly. Honor was taken aback, but if anything her treecat was even more startled than she was. He cautiously bleeked, and she felt his tail come up to brush against her hair as he returned the apparent greeting. Vorkosigan's treecat jumped up onto the room's table to enthusiastically join the conversation, skidding a little on the smooth surface as he mentally greeted Nimitz as well.

"Administrator Vorkosigan, please sit down," she said mildly, refusing to be rattled. Her armsmen were very close to drawing on him. Vorkosigan's attention snapped back to her, and his body language shifted. He grinned, swept her a silent half-bow, and complied.

Folding her hands in front of her, Honor watched him a moment as she tried to improve her read of him. He seemed completely at home in the blank interrogation room, and his emotions were as direct and transparent as any human she'd ever met. He wasn't intimidated by her, that much was certain. Captain Susarla had said that fear was one of the emotions that was burned out of an Administrator, giving them the suicidal honesty necessary to keep the fragile network of Betan control in place across the Nexus.

"Thank you, Admiral Harrington," Vorkosigan said smoothly, the reply oddly delayed. He reached out to run two fingers down his treecat's spine. "To what do we owe the honor of your visit?"

"I could ask you the same." She allowed no humor in her voice. "You are the agent of powers that have committed acts of war against the Star Empire of Manticore, found trespassing in our system without leave or notice. Why are you here, Thierry Vorkosigan?"

The grin flashed again. "Oh, well. I'm here to talk. As an Administrator, my role is to cultivate, sustain, and enforce peace wherever I am assigned. You may consider me an... evaluator. One of my tasks is to determine whether the quarantine we've imposed needs to be maintained."

"Bluntly, Lord Thierry, that's not your decision to make. Whether you are ever going to see the outside of a cell again depends entirely on how cooperative you are willing to be with us."

He shrugged. "Once I deliver the messages I've been entrusted with to your Empress, I have no other pressing engagements."

Honor glanced at the stack of thick blank plastic sheets now half-hidden behind Vorkosigan's amiable treecat. Crypto had had no luck thus far and Honor thought a direct approach might bear more fruit. "What messages?" she asked.

"Basic diplomatic correspondence that I'm not at liberty to discuss with you."

"Do I need to remind you that your people kidnapped, imprisoned, and interrogated our entire diplomatic mission? We do not recognize you as having diplomatic immunity."

"I would hope that you'd be willing to hear us out regardless, Admiral Harrington."

"What do you hope to accomplish?"

"Peace. That's what any Administrator hopes to accomplish."

"Do you intend harm to the Empress?" Honor asked directly.

Lord Thierry looked a bit startled. "No, of course not. I'm not an assassin, Admiral Harrington."

It was, so far as she could tell, an honest answer.

"Captain Susarla tells me that the new Emperor of Barrayar is personality programmed and so is just about every other planetary leader in the Nexus."

She could tell he caught her implication instantly. "Interesting idea, but no." He met her eyes steadily. "We're just here to talk, and find a solution."

He really felt that was possible, and she wondered whether his cultural context was making him overconfident or he really felt that words alone would satisfy Empress Elizabeth. 

Vorkosigan's treecat glanced meaningfully at him and his expression changed. "Admiral, while you're here, may I ask how the treecats are doing?"

 _Not well_. she thought, and from his expression he understood that before her lips even formed the words. "Better than I would expect, given their situation, but many of them aren't eating. Is it correct to assume that most of them are bonded to humans that are now dead?"

He nodded. " _Paul Tankersley_ has been operating as a sanctuary for some time now."

"Normally orphaned treecats don't survive very long. What happened that you have so many?"

He gave her a gentle smile. "Well, we have better mental health services. Many treecats who've lost their chosen human or a mate choose to come to us. There's been a spike in recent years as the generations from before prolong start to die off, too. We lose one or two a year, unfortunately, and a couple more find a new mate or new human. We also have some healthy treecats as nursing staff. It's a full clan, or nearly, though that will change now that Samantha's returned to her mate."

"And why are they _here_?" Vorkosigan's smugness was beginning to irritate her, and she was sure that he caught more than a hint of her frustration.

"Because of Samantha," he said simply. "Samantha needs to be here and wants to be here. She's the senior female on the ship, key to the clan, and her health's been extremely fragile ever since Lord Miles went missing. We hope that reuniting her with her mate will give her the strength to recover. As for the rest, well, part of the ship's mission is to travel between treecat worlds and relay messages and consensus between them. Being here is part of that mission too. It's not just about us, Admiral Harrington."

Samantha again. The cell Thierry Naismith was staying in had been designed for Miles and her, both equally complicit in Honor's eyes. She had not thought to find one without the other.

"Do you think Miles Vorkosigan is still alive, Lord Thierry?" she asked him point blank.

"Samantha does," he said.

"Fair warning," she said. "If your side does not produce him, living or dead, we will be going in to find him."


	4. Chapter 4

Even with the latest generation of communications buoys, there was an unavoidable time lag between Honor's flagship and Manticore, just enough to make the normal flow of conversation inevitably awkward. It was also significantly further into Honor's scheduled sleep period than she would have preferred, but it was hardly like she could have refused this call.

Nor would she have wished to. Honor was long past the point of being awed by her Queen and Empress, but a deep and genuine respect persisted. 

Elizabeth Adrienne Samantha Annette Winton was finally starting to look older than her formal portraits these days, more from the burden of her position than anything else, Honor suspected. There was no sign that burden was weighing on her now, though, and she addressed Honor with the usual dangerous cheer. 

"So are we going to have a war, or not?"

"They are not being hostile at the moment, Your Majesty."

Her Queen flashed her teeth. "That's not quite an answer, Honor."

"It's the best I can give," she replied. "Right now, we can only respond to what they do. Since they initiated contact, they must feel like they can do that while also continuing to have enough control over the situation to feel safe. Which means they probably have plans in place in case we respond in a way they don't like."

"What sort of actual risks do you think we could be dealing with?"

"We have barely any intelligence. We know they can disrupt the Junction. They are presumably in control of at least seven alternate termini, which means they could use a simultaneous transit to bring nearly one and a half billion tons worth of warships into our system. It's implausible but not completely impossible they have some other method they could use to attack us as well."

Elizabeth tilted her head. "You seem more worried about this than I thought you might be."

"I am," she replied bluntly. "Think about how the war with Haven a hundred years ago was going when Miles left. Think about the wars we fought since. There's no way they could know they'd find us here instead of McQueen, or worse. Transiting with their tech on board was an extremely questionable tactical move if they knew we were waiting for them. It's insane given the risk that we weren't."

"They would never have been able to cut us off forever, though. We know enough that we'll eventually be able to reconstruct their wormhole technology." Elizabeth observed. 

"Eventually," Honor said. Some progress had been made, but working Necklin rods were still perhaps fifteen years away, and had been for the last sixty-five years running. "I still think it's merely prudent to assume they have capabilities they aren't revealing and goals they aren't being fully honest about."

"Quite," Elizabeth said. "I do apologize for calling this late, but it seems like there might be some political micromanagement headed your way and I thought I'd warn you. It's about the Junction closure, of course."

Honor wasn't precisely surprised. It was one of the hazards of a command so close to Manticore. "We're following the exact closure plan the Cabinet approved," she observed. "Isn't it a little early for them to try to back out of it?"

"I will be making that point," Elizabeth said. "I have some political capital I can spend if you think it prudent. This may not be the only fire that needs to be put out on the home front, though, and I'm inclined to let them have this one if you don't think hostilities are imminent." 

Honor's lip twitched. "There's an alert state we can put the Junction in where low volume commercial transit is technically permitted but insurance won't cover transit mishaps. I think that would be the way to go if they insist. Let them eat the risk." She'd noted over the years that Manticoran shipping vessels often took the Navy for granted but were much more careful to stay on the right side of their insurers. 

Elizabeth smiled in agreement. "I like that. I suppose it'd also clarify the situation immensely if a ship or two ended up vanished."

"It would, but not necessarily in a good way." Honor said. "We haven't truly been in control of the Junction for a century, but we've been able to pretend we were. If they start regularly sending traffic through or disappearing ships, that pretense will collapse. I can't even begin to predict what the economic and political consequences of that would be. Astro Control at all of the outer termini is under orders to let us know if any unauthorized transits occur, but since we can't trust that we control the Junction, we can't necessarily trust that their dispatches haven't been intercepted. Haven hasn't missed a transit in their treaty windows, but I'm not confident we'd be informed if anything happened at Trevor's Star."

The Empress winced. The last peace treaty with Haven had returned the planet of San Martin to the Star Empire, but not the associated wormhole terminus in the Trevor's Star system. Losing Trevor's Star had been the greatest territorial insult Manticore had suffered in quite some time, and in Honor's opinion the indefensible position San Martin had been left in would likely spark the next war. 

"I don't mean to be too alarmist," Honor continued, watching the broodingly hostile look that often accompanied mention of Haven settle over Elizabeth's face. "There is a good chance everything will go smoothly. They certainly have the capability to create catastrophic outcomes for us, but there's no obvious upside for them. It's hard to judge what their culture has become, but Miles and Captain Thorne always showed a general preference for sleight of hand over brute force of arms. Collectively, they don't seem to fight conflicts in the same way we do."

"That's not necessarily reassuring."

"No, it's not. At least not until we have the ability to force them to fight on our terms. Everything else is a distraction."

"How soon do you think we can get to that point?"

"Regrettably, I don't think we're looking at a very fast resolution here. We can't afford to rush any part of the analysis of what they've done to my ship. Diplomatically... we have Samantha, a large number of very sick treecats, a message from Miles that unfortunately ended up with Liz, and Lord Thierry Vorkosigan. Samantha is barely conscious most of the time and Vorkosigan admits he has no actual authority to negotiate on behalf of anyone in their Nexus." 

"If he's the only person they sent, I'm sure there was a reason for it." Elizabeth said. Her tone turned curious. "What's he like?"

"He's..." Honor wondered how to accurately describe Thierry Vorkosigan "He's not very military," she said. "But he doesn't have the... I don't know, cunning I'd expect of a seasoned diplomat either."

Her monarch looked skeptical. "Remember whose grandson we're dealing with here. I looked over the transcripts. He seemed fairly practiced."

Honor shook her head. "He's not like Miles at all."

"What do you think his angle is?"

A difficult question. "It's hard to categorize this approach to reopening relations as anything but a diplomatic insult. I don't think that's his fault personally, though, he seems to be simply the messenger. The problem is that he hasn't given us the actual message yet."

"Yes, I did hear he wanted to talk to me," Elizabeth said. 

Honor kept her face expressionless, though she thought she knew where this was going. "He wants to see you, and seems perfectly content to wait as long as he has to to make that happen. Until we decide what to do with him, he's going to wait, because I have no interest in letting him dictate terms." 

"Reading between the lines of the reports, wanting an audience with me seems to be his only major sin. Is there a good reason not to give him one, or are you simply making a point?" 

Empress Elizabeth's tone was suspiciously mild, but there was a rebuke there. Honor sighed inwardly. She'd been hoping not to involve Elizabeth personally - of course, the problem with that was that her monarch rather _liked_ excuses to get involved personally. "Your Majesty, I would recommend against it."

"Noted," Elizabeth said, "As your Empress, I'm ignoring your advice. Bring him out to Hephaestus Three. My security doesn't want him to come planetside, but I am coming up there. If nothing else, it'll annoy the Cabinet." She flashed a grin.

Honor inclined her head in reluctant acknowledgement. "Very well, Your Majesty."

"Don't worry, Honor. I'll practically be shrink-wrapped. After all the horrors we went through with the Mesans we're got contingency plans ready for almost anything. We're not even going to be sharing the same air circulation."

Honor let a skeptical expression cross her face. "I haven't seen any indication they intend to employ Mesan-style tactics, but I'm not sure how solid our defenses would truly be if they did. Between all the military personnel exposed, the treecats, and the people who haven't seen their families in a hundred years, any attempt at total containment is going to slip... and that's not even considering Liz."

Her concerns were dismissed with a slight finger wave. "The Queen's Own will handle things. You haven't exactly avoided exposure yourself."

She had to admit that was true. "I'm too personally entangled with all this to do so. If I keep Nimitz from Samantha right now, I think Samantha might die, and I can't exactly quarantine myself from Nimitz."

Elizabeth gave her a sharp look. "She was certainly an instigator in all this, from your own reports. Have you gotten any intelligence out of her?"

"No. Other than the item Liz stole. She's frail and very subdued." Honor said. It struck her that Ariel was not perched on Elizabeth's shoulder. That was unsurprising, given the hour, but she wondered if it was also intentional. It might actually be the first time they had ever had a conversation without their respective treecats, since Nimitz had taken to sleeping with Samantha in her secure enclosure. "I have her locked up under medical monitoring, with Nimitz visiting more often than not. I'm not entirely certain what to do with her otherwise." 

The Empress looked thoughtful. "I assume you're keeping her isolated from the other treecats?"

"The ship's not large enough to put her in the telepathic equivalent of solitary. But she's in no shape to mastermind anything." She'd sensed no more than the occasional flash of treecat communication between Samantha and Vorkosigan's treecat Baiyun. "The Forestry Commission will be moving the other treecats off the Paul Tankersley soon, which will let me send it to the yards for BuWeaps analysis and either disassembly or refit."

"Do you think she'll recover?"

"You've seen orphan treecats," Honor said. "She recovered before. But you know that's not the usual way of things."

Elizabeth nodded. 

"Samantha is an unusually stubborn treecat, though. And we might yet find Miles." Honor frowned and decided to change the subject. "Speaking of military research, I may end up having to turn Lord Thierry over to BuWeaps as well. He has one of their brain implants, so he must be the jump pilot of their vessel. All of the control circuitry for their wormhole technology is in those implants. Depending on exactly how the situation progresses, we may have to take his head apart."

The Empress raised her eyebrows. "Can that be done safely?"

"I don't know. And I wish the situation wasn't presenting itself like this. But he's set himself up as the only human obstacle between us and the security of Manticore." She shrugged, betraying only a small amount of discomfort. "That wasn't very intelligent of him, but I didn't make him do it."


End file.
